THE CORPORATE CONNECTION-The most dangerous mistake being made in dealing with terrorism is thinking that it can be exclusively resolved militarily. Like Antaeus of Greek mythology -- who only got stronger when Hercules fought and slammed him into his mother the earth -- terrorism keeps getting stronger as it is attacked. It’s part of the predictable "collateral damage" sustained by going after terrorists with "shock and awe,” further radicalizing them, enabling them to recruit more and more of the disaffected into their ranks.
Terrorism is nurtured in people who have never been given a stake in their own society or have found their stake is caught in the crossfire between super powers who have supported dictators, their antagonists and a spectrum of other groups in endless not so civil wars against them.
There is yet another more unsolvable problem in confronting the threat of terrorism – something hinted at by our leaders but scrupulously ignored in formulating policy and response. The reality is that, by its nature, post-industrial Western civilization, with its enormous, highly centralized non-agrarian populations, is not self-sufficient. People live packed into cities at the end of long, highly vulnerable supply lines. This makes them easy targets for terrorists who are willing to give up their lives to disrupt what they see as decadent and exploitative cultures responsible for their oppression over centuries.
While normal daily commuter traffic can be completely disrupted by one ill-placed accident or rain storm, imagine the negative effects of a well planned series of attacks on our transportation and energy hubs by a small number of highly organized, motivated terrorists. With recent threats against us targeting Washington D.C. and Times Square, it is clear that terrorists are aware of these options. The question is, even with forewarning, can we really do anything to stop such attacks?
After the recent events in Paris, the French have proposed a three-month suspension of many basic civil rights. This obviates the necessity for us to remember the importance of getting prior judicial authority before infringing on our civil rights because of the Paris attacks. We need to ask whether imposing such measures on American society will ultimately do greater damage to what remains of our already corporate-compromised democracy as we try to protect ourselves from the terrorist threat.
There is a story told in Israel-Palestine of a Palestinian mother who had three sons. Two of them had already blown themselves up on Egged buses, taking a large number of innocent civilians with them. So the question was posed, "What do we do with this woman and her remaining son?" An Israeli journalist came up with a rather counterintuitive solution: "You buy her a house and put her son to work and I think the terrorist acts will come to an end."
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So how can terrorism be stopped? I would argue that the answer lies in a variation of the aforementioned suggestion regarding the Palestinian mother and her remaining son. But it needs to be applied on a much larger scale, where the crimes of the West against the Middle East -- going back to the crusades and before -- are finally set right.
In doing this, biblical or koranic advocated violence must finally be put to rest with the realization that we have arrived at a point in human history referred to in these books – a moment when there literally could be heaven on earth. We have the technology necessary to insure that every human being on the earth can live long and prosperously.
In our world today, the real threat to this possibility is the concentration of unusable wealth in the hands of so few while others are allowed to starve -- based on the false belief that there isn't enough wealth in the world for everyone to live well. While this might have been true in the past, it is clearly no longer the case, especially when you consider what we are now capable of technologically.
What I mean by this is that the unimaginable wealth amassed in the hands of a small segment of our population exploits people to the point that they are willing to give their lives committing terrorist acts. It also means that the more wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, the more diminished the quality of life becomes even for the super-rich. This kind of wealth has long ago reached a point of diminishing returns. And clearly, the feudal option of protecting obscene levels of wealth by building a castle surrounded by a moat is no longer possible given the dissemination of relatively cheap and highly destructive technology.
So what if, instead of spending several trillion dollars fighting endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we spent several trillion dollars raising the standard of living for people living in these Middle East countries and elsewhere…could we not eliminate the main organizing force that drives terrorism?
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 93
Pub: Nov 24, 2015
